Several decades ago, aseptic beverage products came into the marketplace to fulfill the necessity of providing consumers with shelf-stable beverages that required no refrigeration. This new product line was based on the sterilization of liquids and their storage in newly developed multi-layered disposable cartons. The process was designed to sterilize and hold basic fluid beverages like juices and milk in disposable cartons, for extended periods of time without the need of refrigeration. Although the new technology did enable beverages to remain without refrigeration for months, the higher cost of both the process and the cartons, together with the degradation of the nutrients and vitamins due to the exposure of the liquids to high temperatures during packaging, limited the products' success to secondary markets around the globe, where the refrigerated supply chain was not dependable.
But, this created a paradox to this day. A high cost vitamin deficient solution became the only shelf-stable alternative for emerging markets, where the consumer's purchasing power is limited and the need for higher nutrition imperative.
To address consumer acceptance, nutrition, non-refrigeration, low cost and other issues, various multi-compartment containers have been developed that allow consumers to mix the components immediately prior to consumption. One type of container, for example, uses caps/closures that are filled with a first component and placed on the top of a bottle filled with a second component. By pressing down on this type of closure, the bottom of the cavity breaks open and its contents are dropped into the second component below containing, for example, water. Although this method can avoid the thermal processes of sterilization, it has not achieved success in the market because, first, the internal cavity that holds the separate component is small and thus can only be used for concentrated powders, and second, it is very expensive. The cost of a PET bottle, the cap filling process, and the cap/closure itself, result in a very high cost packaging solution. Moreover, the actual product dispenses the liquid with awkward fluidity through the same area of the closure that can get contaminated during activation (e.g., when pressed by an un-sanitized thumb).
Many other attempts to developing a multi-sectional container have been made. These include bottles within bottles, plastic bags within a bottle, caps with plunger mechanisms, “screw on” bottle sections, and parallel containers sharing the same closure, just to mention a few. Yet, many have been unsuccessful in the marketplace due to production complications, high costs, functionality issues, limited applications and just simple inconvenience.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art for a reliable, cost-effective container and associated method for providing shelf stable beverages and other comestibles to consumers around the world.